Models of Hunger

Early scientific interest in hunger research was dominated by medical models,
which identified the physiological mechanisms and systems involved. One of
the earliest attempts to understand the sensation of hunger was an experiment
conducted in 1912, in which a subject swallowed a balloon and then inflated
it in his stomach. His stomach contractions and subjective reports of
hunger feelings could then be simultaneously recorded. When the recordings
were compared to the voluntary key presses that the subject made each
time he experienced the feeling of hunger, the researchers concluded that it
was the stomach movements that caused the sensation of hunger. It was later
found, however, that an empty stomach is relatively inactive and that the stomach
contractions experienced by the subject were an experimental artifact
caused by the mere presence of the balloon in the stomach.
Further evidence for the lack of connection between stomach stimuli and
feelings of hunger was provided in animal experiments which resulted in
differentiating two areas of the hypothalamus responsible for stimulating eating behavior and signaling satiety—the “start eating” and “stop eating”
centers.

Psychologist Stanley Schachter and his colleagues began to explore the
psychological issues involved in hunger by emphasizing the external, nonphysiological
factors involved. In a series of experiments in which normalweight
and overweight individuals were provided with a variety of external
eating cues, Schachter found that overweight subjects were more attentive
to the passage of time in determining when to eat and were more excited by
the taste and sight of food than were normal-weight persons. More recently,
the growth of the field of social psychology has provided yet a different perspective
on hunger, one that accounts for the situational and environment
factors which influence the physiological and psychological states. For example,
psychologists have examined extreme hunger and deprivation in
case studies from historical episodes such as war, concentration camps, and
famine in the light of the more recent interest in the identification and
treatment of eating disorders.

There does not appear to be a consistent or ongoing effort to develop an
interdisciplinary approach to the study of hunger. Because hunger is such a
complex drive, isolating the factors associated with it poses a challenge to
the standard research methodologies of psychology such as the case study,
experiment, observation, and survey. Each methodology has its shortcomings,
but together the methodologies have produced findings which clearly
demonstrate that hunger is a physiological drive embedded in a psychological,
social, and cultural context.

Viewing hunger as a multidimensional behavior has led to an awareness
of hunger and its implications in a broader context. Changing dysfunctional
attitudes, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors concerning hunger has not always
been seen as a choice. Through continued psychological research into
the topic of hunger—and increasing individual and group participation in
efforts to understand, control, and change behaviors associated with hunger—
new insights continue to emerge that will no doubt cast new light on
this important and not yet completely understood topic.